


His Was a Still and Lovely Face

by EgregiousDerp



Category: Naruto
Genre: Consenting Somnophilia Fantasies, Established Relationship, In which Lee concocts elaborate excuses to make his sexual desires okay to himself, M/M, PWP, Sleeby Lee, Somnophiliac Themes, and Gaara doesn’t mention to his boyfriend he can see in the dark, “Hey Remember That Time I Almost Died Babe?”
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:48:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26377564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EgregiousDerp/pseuds/EgregiousDerp
Summary: I met at eve the Prince of Sleephis was a still and lovely face,He wandered through a Valley Steep,Lovely in a lonely place.———Romance was meant to be a higher pursuit than the desires of the body- unless that body was helping sate the needs of a precious other person.Gai-Sensei had been very adamant about the circumstances in which one could let go of themselves. Always on the behalf of another. That was the essence of discipline.
Relationships: Gaara/Rock Lee
Comments: 27
Kudos: 65





	His Was a Still and Lovely Face

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whazzername](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whazzername/gifts).



> This got sent to Whazz under the table on her birthday on the first.  
> (“Oh shit your birthday’s coming up. What do you want?”  
> “Porn is good.”  
> “Porn. Okay. Porn. Yeah.”
> 
> Days later: “Yo, how do you feel about Somnophilia? You know what? I should just send you this.”)
> 
> That was more than a week ago though. I was all “oh hey I had a scene thought in the shower, let me just add in Kankuro being himself”, and then the work literally doubled in size while I was making excuses not to finish the stitchwork.
> 
> As it does.
> 
> Hopefully this is still passably within your gift range, Whazz. 💛
> 
> Many thanks to a_gay_poster for looking this over in the long form. My usual Sex Fic Checker was absolutely wasted this weekend living their best lockdown life. Any remaining issues or dubious shit is probably (definitely) on me.
> 
> Titles are a pain, so this one is from Walter de la Mare’s “I met at Eve”, which I found at about four in the morning yesterday on my second shot of clean-my-sinuses gin all “shit. I’d better find a title.”
> 
> Hilariously, I found a poem in under thirty minutes that hit a lot of the main themes and imagery, possibly creating the illusion that I planned all this out like an English Class Essay.
> 
> I did not.

-o-O-o-

  
Lee grimaced, stirring slowly, blinking up at the dark of the ceiling. 

He shifted his legs feeling heavy warmth across the top of them, a lump under the covers.

It was very hot around his legs. His bad one hurt in particular the way it did when he laid too many training blankets on, though he could tell by feel that he’d laid only the lightest Autumn set on. Barely anything. Barely enough to stop him from summer dangers. He had half a mind to kick them off, but then Gaara would be cold-

Lee blinked, then relaxed, catching up all at once, settling a hand over the shape under his blanket. He grinned in the dark like an idiot.

Oh. Right. _Gaara_.

He patted absently at the blanket, settling back down.

That was why he’d slept with his lightest blankets.

Well. If it was for Gaara, he could endure far greater heat than this!

If he didn’t…

Mm.

Well. He’d think of something, Lee reasoned to himself, petting absently at the shape of a head, and a jut that was maybe a shoulder under his blankets.

Outside his firmly closed window Lee could feel the rustle of the chakra of the night patrols, even in peace. There were more out there probably, masking their signatures. The unmasked chakra would herd intruders into patterns, at which point they could be more easily picked out and identified by the masked patrols. His Sensei had described this using glowing adjectives for his rival who had put such patterns into effect. It was ex-ANBU thinking. The kind of duty that would always have an opening for someone like Lee, with his naturally huge signature, never mind his disabilities.

Lee pet at the blanket without really thinking about it, closing his eyes, exchanging one darkness for another.

He didn’t want that kind of job. Admirable though it was. Safer though it definitely was.

Guard duty was a Shinobi mission, and he’d done plenty of bouts of it. Such a mission had gotten him here in a way.

But...

Lee sighed.

Gaara’s own ANBU would probably be occupied with hiding from both patrols. Like a game. They were _quite_ good at it. Gaara had a great deal of practice hiding the most massive chakra in a nation. He was very proud of his ANBU. Justifiably, in Lee’s opinion.

They probably still knew Gaara was with him.

Lee sighed and shifted a little, closing his eyes. Well. He could not help that. He couldn’t focus enough to bring a sense of anxiety about that. Instead he reflected absently on the balance of the two of them. Open Chakra and Hidden Chakra. Heat and cold.

He drifted slightly, meandering along the line of it. The thought of two Shinobi in harmony, a sand-smoothed hand in his...

His eyes flew back open as the bedding shifted and he realized with a lurch what had awakened him.

It wasn’t unusual for his body to have certain youthful reactions in sleep. And he understood his-

(Lover?)

-his _partner_ didn’t need to sleep as he did. Gaara didn’t even own a _bed_ in his quarters in Suna. His body, even uninhabited by Shukaku, slipped into just a handful of catnaps across the day. 

The Kazekage usually dozed for a span of about a half an hour during the hottest point of the day in his office chair, or folded his arms and slept a little while after a meal: just for a handful of minutes at a time. 

Lee had learned this a long time ago.

His eyelids lifted at every presence but Lee’s or a member of his family’s, still utterly aware. Lee admired that a little, and worried for it a little more.

It was unexpectedly adorable watching Gaara fold up into a chair and nod off like an old man.

He’d missed one of his catnaps after dinner today because he’d been preoccupied with prolonging his time with Lee. And no amount of arguing or pointing out Gaara’s quiet irritability would ease his stubbornness. 

He was a singularly _stubborn_ Shinobi. And that was saying something coming from Lee.

Lee had hoped this would mean he would rest longer during the night—especially after Gaara had insisted adamantly on accompanying him to bed, practically marching him to it in the determined, frowning, intense way he had that always made Lee laugh.

He’d also hoped their intimacy before bed would _relax_ Gaara, and help him find sleep more readily still. Not that that had been...well...the _only_ reason. He enjoyed his time with Gaara. _All_ of his time with Gaara. But Lee had considered it nonetheless, because his- well. Gaara worked so terribly hard even his ANBU had to take shifts to keep up with him, and Lee himself found his drive impressive.

But Lee’s body was _youthful_ after all. It was a double edged sword. Even a slow, sensual bout of horizontal combat with Suna’s surprisingly passionate Kazekage wasn’t enough to fully sate the vigor of Lee’s Springing Youth, or his sense of adventure.

He was a bit ashamed of that.

Romance was meant to be a higher pursuit than the desires of the body- unless that body was helping sate the needs of a precious other person.

Gai-Sensei had been very _adamant_ about the circumstances in which one could let go of themselves. Always on the behalf of another. That was the essence of discipline.

But Gai-Sensei had had many lessons and Lee’s body had had very natural youthful reactions across the night. It had since he was a child. Especially with a smaller, warm body tucked against it, and the earthy smell of Gaara’s skin, his faint sweat lingering on his sheets.

He was _hot_ , his bad leg twinged, and he could feel the pillar of his seventh gate rising like a particularly proud and embarrassingly lofty flag.

Lee grimaced and pet at Gaara under the tent of the blankets instead of touching anything else.

He never did.

Such spirited tokens of youth often faded in minutes. It was a test of resolve and will to outlast them.

This too was discipline. And to be expected. Because Gaara was here.

_Gaara-_

He _missed_ the smell of his partner when Gaara was gone, and he was often gone. And he’d begun to unconsciously recognize that earthy smell often meant… well. Kissing. Affection. _Horizontal Battle._

His body was a quick study after all, after years of training with it.

His youth was unexpectedly persistent today.

Lee was a little ashamed of himself.

Gai-Sensei was meant to have trained a more disciplined student. But Gai-Sensei also understood youth. He didn’t think his Sensei would speak harshly to him if he confided in him which meant the thing Lee fought with was mostly himself. His own sense that he should do better. _Be_ better. Withstand the temptation to stare at the creamy sliver of skin when Gaara unbuttoned his high collar. He should pay attention to him and not just stare in vague amazement every time he was there, trying to formulate something _impressive_ to do or to say, and often failing, stumbling over the slight upward curve of Gaara’s lips and the creases at the corners of his pale, sunken eyes when he looked at him. The bewilderment.

Lee’s fingers curled in the knitwork of the blanket in the dark, stock still as Gaara shifted, breath sighing faintly against Lee’s belly.

The eighth gate within his heart gate a _squeeze._

During Konoha’s summers, Lee slept very nearly in the nude as a concession to the heat. He lived on the fifth floor, and he had several weighted training blankets designed for cooling.

The patrols in the roads still had shamefully special instructions for when Lee wandered in the summer nights, oblivious, and in his underwear.

His sleep was restless. It always had been. He had just so much pent up energy! Even his vigorous training only could do so much.

His unweighted blanket was for the autumn, when Lee often slept in his jumpsuit.

Autumn was a long way off, though, and the room was even hotter in the depth of summer with the windows tightly locked and the blinds drawn, and his autumn blanket drawn up to his belly, over Gaara, who’d curled his body up like a cat’s to huddle entirely underneath the covering.

It had been even hotter when Gaara had made love to him on top of the blanket, limbs curled together and around one another, sweat gathering in the dip of Lee’s sternum and dripping in beads down Gaara’s spine, breath coming ragged and hitching as Lee gasped his name the way that always made Gaara’s pupils widen just a hair.

That had been at sundown, when he could still see the black of Gaara’s gleaming pupils, and could still see their bodies locked together, and feel the merciless rutting of Gaara’s narrow hips between his legs, the sticky pool of pleasure growing against his belly where the apex of his seventh gate curved, mouth full of a symphony of sighs and strangled cries, fingers tangled in Gaara’s hair as he licked the sweat from Lee’s skin like he was dying of thirst, mapping the planes of his throat, his shoulders, his chest with his lips and tongue.

The night offered little coolness or relief with the windows closed. It simply offered darkness.

It was very dark indeed with Lee’s blackout curtains drawn. Which Lee was grateful for, fifth floor or not, because when Gaara was there with him, Gaara slept as though he didn't care passing patrols could peek in on him naked, let alone deep in heated horizontal combat with Konoha’s Handsome Blue Devil.

A combat he’d won at and Lee had surrendered to at the very start of the night.

More than once, at that.

It had been months after all, and they were both young men, Lee barely twenty-three, and Gaara always two years behind but a genius.

He considers himself lucky to have found something so precious so young, even if their differing nations steal time from them both.

Gaara is always conscious of the smallness of their time together just as Lee is.

They both understood that Gaara didn’t sleep much, and Gaara was stubborn to a fault and refused to leave Lee when he slept whenever business carried him to Konoha—those few days maybe once every few months.

They usually didn’t redress until the morning. It tended to save time. They were both young men in the prime of their youth, and Gaara was very matter of fact about not wasting anything.

This was not their first disagreement about how best to make use of their time together.

Lee had tried very hard to establish certain blanket permissions about his sleeping body in regards to alleviating Gaara’s presumed boredom, just as they’d come to agreements on what to do in the case the other was caught in a nightmare. 

Lee had permission to try and comfort Gaara when he wept in his sleep—which he did more often than not when he was truly asleep and not just resting with his eyes closed listening to Lee’s heartbeat, or just pillowing his cheek on the softer inside of Lee’s hip where the smell of him was stronger like he was doing now.

He was _cute_ curled up in his dozes until you noticed the sheen of silent tears trickling down his cheeks. Lee could feel it when he wept even in the dark of his room.

That still didn’t mean it was best to wake Gaara just because he was weeping.

He didn’t seem to notice he’d been crying when he woke after all.

And it was true Gaara slept poorly even when he did sleep. How else would he be so alert?

All the same, Lee could count Gaara’s true nightmares on one hand, and knew them easily because the sand would crawl up the bed and cocoon him. 

Unlike his simple missions, that had been a learning experience for much later.

Lee had gotten an arm stuck once or twice in such a cocoon in their time together. Which had once been enough to startle him awake into his own visceral panic and memory one of the two times, and had led to an awkward mutual waking and a groggy, cranky Gaara.

Lee disliked the _guilt_ of groggy, cranky Gaaras even if Gaara never said a word in accusation. 

Lee had likewise awakened maybe twice in all the times they’d been together, to Gaara sitting on his chest, pinning him to the bed spread-eagle with his sand following Lee’s own rather vivid but thankfully rarer nightmares. 

Sometimes he remembered them.

Failure of his body.

Failure to _protect_.

Sometimes, a beloved face he cried out to, and seaglass green eyes with gleaming pupils that looked on him and smiled cruelly, not recognizing him.

Sometimes he was thirteen again, hounded on all sides by bitter failures and faced with an opponent who would never love him.

Lee was grateful for the help during those times. He was hard to wake. And he’d walked in his sleep from the time he was a child. It used to frighten him to wake up in some unknown place and be held accountable for actions he didn’t remember. He’d even _fought_ others, to hear Neji and TenTen tell it. 

They liked to tease him, and say his attempts at escaping the summer heat were the cause of an entire batch of ANBU initiatory hazing.

Lee was too embarrassed to even consider if the teasing had a grain of truth. If he’d done anything so shameful as charge full fledged members of the black ops asleep and in his underwear, possibly burning with youth.

He was even more alarmed by the thought of fighting Gaara in the heat of the summer and the height of his incoherence, than the thought of traumatizing the Hokage’s private forces with his fists and his nocturnal erections.

He couldn’t _bear_ the thought of fighting Gaara any more than his heart could take the sound of Gaara quietly sobbing in his sleep without kissing his tear-stained cheeks and holding him, whispering that he was there. He was there and was not going to leave him until the tears either stilled because Gaara had awakened in his arms, or, most recently, until Gaara cried his name.

Lee had held all him more tightly at that the last time, heart in his throat, covering the back of his neck in overwhelmed kisses until Gaara woke and rolled around to clutch at him, breathing heavily. 

Lee somehow instinctively knew Gaara had been dreaming of him meeting his end by how hard he held him, and by the way he wept silently into Lee’s bare shoulder even awake, fingers digging into his back like claws.

He’d held him and kissed him repeatedly, whispering “it is okay. It is okay. I am here. Gaara. I am here.” until the silent, ragged tears had slowed and then stopped.

He was grateful for Gaara holding him down in his own nightmares. Both times Gaara had comforted him. Firmly. And Thoroughly. Kissing him, and wordlessly running his fingers through his hair in a way Lee knew meant that he understood.

Lee was _grateful_. For a partner who would not be frightened no matter what he displayed.

They were shinobi. They understood such things were natural side effects for those who lived the kinds of lives they did.

They comforted one another as they would have liked to be comforted.

It seemed to be enough.

Lee wasn’t held in place this time, so this wasn’t an instance of nightmare.

There was something...different at hand. A playful softness he recognized as Gaara’s chapped mouth planting slow kisses along the ridge of his hip, chin scratching him sweetly with barely-there stubble. That was something that only happened when Gaara didn’t wear his armor for long enough for hair to even _grow_ on his body.

Lee had only managed three days with him out of his sand armor as a record, enough to see Gaara’s beard was nothing more than patchy pubescent clusters of almost-blonde hair at the corners of his mouth and the underside of his chin, sparse prickles of it at his jawline, felt, more than seen. They’d been preoccupied then with survival and with water, trapped in a cave in Suna, so Lee hadn’t been able to fully enjoy or explore the feel of the hair growing back in the first place, or leaving stinging rashes across his back, his belly, his inner thighs.

It wouldn’t have been appropriate at the time, to say the least.

Thinking of Gaara’s stubble under his fingers and the coolness of water trickling between his lips as he fed his water ration to Lee still evoked complicated, deep emotions in Lee.

They’d been in the cave for two days longer than that fine three-day stubble. Gaara had put his armor back on after that, desperately hunting for moisture, for water with his sand. And Lee was left with only the rare memory.

He tries not to think so selfishly of having Gaara to himself long enough for his hair to grow back, and gild him in faint red-gold.

He remembers that time only in patches as bare as Gaara’s meager body hair.

The acrid mineral-sweat taste of the water and the softness of Gaara’s lips. The feeling as though he was burning from the inside out, with emotion and also the sense that something inside him had gone horribly wrong.

Gaara says he kissed him for the first time when Lee was delirious with fever from the poison he’d jumped in the way of. He’d been trying to lessen the bite of it on his lips. The sickly sweet aerosol.

At least that was what Lee assumed.

The Shinobi in question had died easily. A desperate man. A duplicitous one. One who knew the Kazekage’s chakra reserve was massive and saw an opportunity.

One who had been shocked by another Shinobi cutting straight through his mist to snuff him out with a single chop to the throat.

He’d died quickly and with hardly any fuss, and when Lee had turned back to crow in triumph, Gaara had been very very pale, his eyes huge and horrified before the ground had swum and Lee had felt suddenly _very very tired._

Lee doesn’t remember enough to argue about it after the fact. But he does remember jumping to protect Gaara with his life, remembers a blur of motion, a scream, the smell of earth, and a cave, Gaara’s hands tilting his head and his grave, ash-soft voice whispering _do you understand what you’ve done? Lee. Lee, your chakra network is inflamed. It has to be regulated or you’ll die_. And how funny that had seemed at the time, because Gaara knew as he did that he could barely even regulate his chakra to pool at his feet. So he would surely die. He remembers the stricken tension in the minute changes of the Kazekage’s expression within a blur of pain, and of building heat.

The nakedness of Gaara’s fear, and how distantly strange it had seemed.

Lee remembers the curious lack of fear in himself. Gai-Sensei had raised students who lived without regrets. Gaara’s terror had seemed so alien.

Lee remembers raising his head, the gesture seeming to take every ounce of his strength. 

_Before I die...I must tell you something..._

Gaara had quieted him with a fingertip to his lips. And it had felt so cool and welcome and somehow still aching Lee had moaned, and regretted it when Gaara drew back, embarrassed when Gaara whispered _Save your strength._

_But it is-_

_Tell me,_ Gaara had said, _when you’re well._

Lee had quailed at the brittle severity in his eyes. He’d gone silent.

He remembers water trickling through Gaara’s lips and between his own, startling him at first. The first day. An ache like something physical welling within his chest, hands too weak to even cup the back of Gaara’s head, to lay fingers over top of his gripping hands, and respond. The grief that this was to be the only set of kisses he shared with Gaara, and the elation of being kissed at all, even if it was purely practical, the odd awareness that Gaara’s lips were simultaneously both rough and soft, and he wished he had more time, more energy, that he could tell him _why_ he regretted nothing.

That he wished he could spend the final moments of his life kissing him.

He could say none of that. Too weak. Too hot.

He could only slip over and under the surface of consciousness, and drink, deeply.

He remembers Gaara’s ear against his chest, listening to his stammering heartbeat while fever made his teeth chatter and the chill hadn’t left his bones even in the desert, even with Gaara’s body pressed against him to warm him.

He remembers two fingers against the pulse points of his wrists and the sensation of something wild and uncatchable brushing something deep inside him. _Wrongness_ . (Rightness.) The unspeakable intimacy of something huge and insistent siphoning off his blazing, aching chakra. The relief and yet the urgent pressing of him, the all consuming sense of his presence. His weak, slurring murmurs of _Gaara-kun...you will become sick. Gaara-kun...please...don’t..._ and the heavier press of Gaara’s thumbs against his useless wrists. The tense thinning of Gaara’s cracked lips that Lee wanted to kiss so badly. The raw, shameful pang of wanting to be with him physically as well as this mingling of spirit. Shame. Poison stirring his youth to hardness as Gaara’s chakra washed over him.

Gaara graciously didn’t acknowledge that particular embarrassment any more than he acknowledged Lee’s whispered protests except with a brush of his lips with his own to still them, having no free hands.

The hurricane of Gaara’s chakra roared against Lee’s own seemingly for hours until Lee slipped under again, succumbing to the thrilling, dangerous wildness, dreaming fever dreams that featured the Kazekage’s cracked lips meeting his over and over and over. Of finally being able to speak with him.

_(Gaara-kun, I could never regret meeting my end fighting for someone I have grown to love so dearly.)_

Even in his fantasies Gaara never responded in words.

He didn’t know what he could possibly say to such a thing.

Maybe rejection, like everyone else he’d ever made such a sincere statement to.

The ache of his youth had burned for close to an hour before it finally subsided and Lee vomited from the pain wracking his fourth and fifth gates, the blistering migraine starting in his head.

Gaara’s fingers had seemed like the only deliciously cool thing in all the world. The only silent relief as Lee panted and reeled.

It had been five days before they’d been found. 

Four days Gaara had stayed awake and siphoned off the fever into his own network, sickening himself to keep Lee alive while Lee begged him not to. Four days of water pouring past his lips and Lee wanting to hold Gaara, to tell him everything, but being too weak and hurting to speak. Pain breaking over him like the cracking of his gates at first and then on the third day in a fire that made him writhe and scream and only eased when Gaara pressed against him with another lukewarm mouthful of water and the press of his cool, stormy chakra so Lee sobbed in relief. Days of his youth rising and ebbing shamefully with no relief. Which Lee thought made sense just like the squeezing in his heart, the churning of his hungry insides. There were chakra gates all through his body. It was poison.

Just poison.

His teeth chattered and Gaara stilled them with the press of his warm body to his side. 

Lee _burned._ Gaara’scool hands, the cool water trickling from his lips were the only tiny reliefs in a world narrowed to pain and pain alone.

The fourth day, Gaara’s chapped lips had been tinged with gray, and he’d shivered too badly himself to kiss Lee, a bright and determined stubbornness in his eyes despite the haze of fever. Lee’s tongue had been too dry to speak any longer. They’d stared at one another instead, trying to articulate their desperations with their eyes, their matching stubbornnesses.

_Please go. You may still live if you find help._

And Gaara’s pale, unflinching gaze that seemed to say back _I’m not leaving you._

The pain all in Lee’s eighth gate, clenching his heart. He would have wept but he didn’t have the moisture left for tears.

Lee doesn’t remember the fifth day at all.

He’d fallen blessedly unconscious by then, Gaara’s thumbs still bruising the pulse points in his wrists.

Five days until they were both too sick to move, huddled around one another for warmth against the fever chill, dug out, delirious, by Gaara’s ANBU, and Neji’s _Byakugan._

Neji had searched for them so hard he’d been all but blind for days after.

Lee knows this only because Sakura told him.

Neji was proud, too proud to admit fear.

They hadn’t put Lee and Gaara in the same hospital room, even then. Why would they? How would they know what had passed between the two of them in that time? The mingling of their spirits. 

They hadn’t put him with Neji either.

Which made sense. Because Neji was proud. He never wanted to be seen during his blindness. His migraines from overuse.

Lee had awakened alone to the sound of crying.

That had confused him. It wouldn’t be Neji or TenTen. Both of them knew that to give one’s life for the sake of another was at the core of Gai-sensei’s Nindo. It had shaped the cores of their own ninja ways. Even Neji’s.

Lee opened his eyes to find...Gaara.

Suna’s Kazekage. The man he owed his life to. The man he would have given his life for.

The man he remembered _wanting_ so badly, just beyond the edge of reach.

( _It was poison. Not real. Not really-_ )

Gaara had dragged himself to Lee’s bedside to crawl on top of him and had laid his thumbs on the points of his pulse, like he was still in danger. He had pulled out the IV giving him water, and had staggered to Lee’s bedside so he could _save_ him.

Probably delirious.

The mark on his forehead burned with fever and he shivered against Lee, eyes tightly closed.

For the first time it had dawned on Lee that Gaara hadn’t just been trying to save him. 

He’d been willing to die with him.

Lee had awakened like that, with Gaara unconscious, folded over him, noticing for the first time that the Kazekage cried in his sleep, the front of his gown wet with Gaara’s precious tears, the sobs muffled like a child’s trying not to be heard.

  
it wasn’t the last time Gaara would cry against him.

For the first time, Lee had had the strength, and he had held him, had finally buried his hands in that coarse red hair until Gaara’s tears slowed, then stopped, and his eyes opened for just a moment, then shut again, ear pressed tightly against Lee’s rapidly pounding heart.

( _Poison. Maybe. Residual… Who would do such a thing to Gaara-kun-?)_

Gaara’s lips were cracked so deeply the flesh was white and red with blood. He hadn’t had anything to drink himself for days. He’d probably sustained himself with his own massive chakra until it was agony to do so.

Lee had wanted to kiss him so badly.  
  


Didn’t.

Lee had squeezed him tightly, and had opened his chakra to him, and for all his faltering had pushed, and pushed, trying to overcome his body’s boundaries and reach into the strange turbulence that was Gaara.

He didn’t succeed.

He hadn’t stopped trying, though.

And Gaara hadn’t left him.

His breathing had gone deep and even and for the first time, he’d fallen asleep in Lee’s arms.

It wouldn’t be the last time.

The enormity of that trust resonated no less deeply with Lee now.

There were routines in place for comforting one another in the echoes of trauma. They had been instinctive long before they became routine.

They’d loved one another more than themselves long before they’d had words for it, let alone routines, and it was strange but natural for Lee to realize the sand would not hurt him no matter how frightened Gaara was, and for Lee to know Gaara had a playful side. A humor. A protectiveness that extended far beyond himself.

And that he made love like he kissed, hands bruising Lee’s wrists. Like he was desperate to make up for lost time, _every single time_ , his fingers digging into Lee’s neck, pulling him down to his level. He slept with his ear to Lee’s heart like he was checking to see he still wasn’t in danger, filling him, completing him in ways Lee hadn’t known existed.

Lee had been in love with him then. He was even more in love now.

There were routines now for when Lee’s body responded to sleep with youth. Thrilling ones.

He was a little embarrassed, as per usual, but Gaara was always extraordinarily matter-of-fact about the whole thing. As he had been about his emotions once, when Lee had made clear he would die for him.

Gaara handled love as directly as he handled anything else, pointed and thorough in his pursuit.

Lee shifted gingerly, lifting the edge of the blanket. His fingers brushed soft, coarse hair. Warmth. There was dampness in the fine hairs at the nape of Gaara’s neck. The soft curve of his unarmored cheek. Humid heat. He radiated it like a furnace.

The smooth skin tilted under his touch, a chapped mouth pressing a kiss to Lee’s palm.

Something deep in Lee’s chest softened in blind affection.

“Mm. Gaara... Did I wake you?”

Lee’s voice was rough and muzzy with sleep. His mouth was dry and tasted off. He smacked his lips to clear away the taste of dryness.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” The low purr of Gaara’s voice replied, shifting a little puff of warm breath down Lee’s hip that made him blush and squirm, hot air catching on the fine hair of his thighs.

“You could _try_ -“

“I’m not tired,” Gaara whispered. His breathing shifted, hot exhale wafting over Lee’s Aching Youth.

Lee shifted back a little more into the pillows, tensing as his erection twitched. He blushed, grateful suddenly for the dark.

“ _Muh. Wh-_ What time is it?”

“Nearly three.”

Lee groaned. He still had more than an hour before he would be up even to do his earliest exercises. And more often than not, Gaara being there delayed him, put him behind on his self-challenges.

Somehow that was less frustrating than it should have been.

Gaara gave him new challenges too, Lee thought, inhaling sharply as he felt Gaara kiss his palm, then the swell of his hip again, his rough tongue tracing the outline of an old scar. His cheek scratched the edge of Lee’s thigh and Lee thoughtlessly parted his legs a little wider, tilting his hips up, swallowing loudly in the empty dark.

Gaara’s fingers traced down along the shape of him, edging along the damp line of Lee’s taint.

Lee squirmed a little.

He _ached_ like he had actually been roused for a while, like Gaara had been amusing himself for a few minutes, muddling Lee’s dreams, making him remember a time in a cave. The low light and the howling wind, the grains of sand floating in the air making him cough, and the way his chest _hurt_ and _burned_ every time he coughed. Gaara’s diligent attempts to suck the poison from his wounds. The pink of his blood in Gaara’s teeth, and on the swell of his lips and how good it looked. The thought that Gaara was doing everything he could to _save_ him, and the wonder at his determination.

The press of his lips and the slow trickle of water feeding between them, the heady graze of his tongue that had made Lee’s cheeks burn with more than fever.

And then later, his desperate hands on his wrists. The overly intimate thrum of his turbulent chakra.

Lee reflected on just how many worse ways there were for a Shinobi to die than by slow poison in the arms of someone they’d thought friendly but distant. Unattainable.

It had been desperate.

Had _felt_ desperate.

And then Lee had awakened first to Gaara weeping against him, and to holding him (finally!)

And then to an empty bed, to too-light blankets, and to Kankuro, blunt purple shapes sharpening his features, peeling figs with a blunt knife that looked like it belonged on a painting palette and eating them by Lee’s bedside.

_Hey. You alive?_

Lee had breathed out.

_Where is Gaara-kun?_

_Resting. Where he’s supposed to be. In his room._

Guilt had played heavy in Lee’s gut. Yet he felt the need to defend his friend. Who was probably alone, weeping in his sleep. Small. And cold.

The lump in his throat had felt enormous.

_He only left to help me._

_Help?_ Kankuro snorted, sucking a bead of syrup off his finger, red as blood. _Please. You know what that guy’s chakra control is like?_

The blank look on Lee’s face seemed to throw him.

_Gaara-kun is a most formidable Shinobi._

_Yeah well, medical nin he isn’t. They found you in time, but if it had been a few hours later? Well...Let’s just say you’re lucky to be alive. And super lucky you don’t need that network of yours for anything._

Lee had breathed out, clenching his hands.

_What you have seen is not his fault. I have had both congenital and cumulative damage to my chakra network since I was a child. It is why I am a Shinobi who does not know Ninjutsu or Genjutsu. I have difficulty even standing on still water._

_Difficulty my ass. I’ve seen your charts,_ Kankuro muttered. _That kind of shit’s something I’ve only seen-_ He’d cut himself off. _You know what? It doesn’t matter. Point is you got stuck in a cave with a guy who used to leave boot prints on every tree he hung off of. Gaara’s all power and no finesse, always has been. Whatever problems you had before, you’d better get ready to have to work twice as hard getting past them just because he decided to meddle and “help”._

The Derision in the word _help_ absolutely rubbed wrong at something in Lee.

_Gaara-kun saved my life,_ Lee whispered. _I will work hundreds of times as hard if it means I may continue to express my gratitude to him._

Kankuro’s fang-marked purple mouth had worked around a sliver of fig like it had gone sour. He took a pointed, furious bite, twirling the knife in his fingers like he wanted to hit something with it.

_Please tell me… Is Gaara-kun alright?_

Kankuro’s painted eyes narrowed. He looked very hard at Lee for a long moment.

_Depends. Like I said, he’s no good at medical ninjutsu. He tell you what he did?_

Lee stared at the sheets.

He wasn’t untruthful, but the sensation of Gaara’s chakra, and the feeling of his mouth on his, the taste of bitter water sweetened only by his breath seemed like something that was too precious to share even with Gaara’s sibling.

Kankuro sucked another bead of sap from a finger, the trickle of it across his knuckles as red as the blood fissured in Gaara’s cracked lips.

_That cute girl from your village with the flat tits says he’ll be alright-_

Kankuro paused only for a moment to stare at the rip that abruptly appeared in Lee’s sheets.

Lee let go, smoothing them hastily.

_I am sorry. Her name- Her name is Haruno Sakura-chan._

_Right. Yeah. Pink hair, big old-_

_If you continue to speak disparagingly about Sakura-chan’s features, I will have to respectfully ask you to leave my room._

Kankuro seemed surprised. He grinned.

_Guess you can ask._

Lee’s knuckles creaked. His chakra network still throbbed with pain, but he still had enough in him to strain the edges of his first gate warningly.

He could shred his sheets to bandages and have the other man in a lotus even in this state.

_I will ask the first time. But I will not ask again._

Kankuro blinked, then snorted.

_You know, you’re pretty touchy for a guy who just spent a few days punched through with the world’s worst chakra drip._

Lee had just stared at him.

_You know? Chakra drip?_ Kankuro repeated, sucking the pulp out of another fig with a juicy smack, leaving a wrinkled black skin. _Poor dumb bastard must have been trying real hard to save you. He’s got no finesse, Gaara. He’s never had to try. Dumbass was probably trying to heal you. He’s lucky to even get that far. Instead of patching your network up, all he really did was manage to splice yours with his. Can’t imagine what_ that _was like._

Intimate. Turbulent.

The ghost of something unspeakable twitches the shameful peak of Lee’s youth under the hospital sheets and he shifts hastily, drawing his knees up to hide it.

_The only thing I would wish to convey to Gaara-kun is that I am thankful for his kindness, and that I am deeply sorry to have frightened him or to have hurt him by my own inability._

Kankuro had just stared at him hard, something like pity in his eyes.

_...right. Whatever. Just don’t let him sneak in here. That idiot needs to take it easy for a while._

Lee stared miserably at his knees, willing the embarrassing half-erection from the memory of Gaara’s chakra to subside. He thought of Gaara’s soft lips, and the taste of water that had been worn close to Gaara’s skin.

_I do not think I can stop him._ Lee had breathed, while he thought that really he didn’t _want_ to stop Gaara. Hoping. And thinking there was surely no way.

But next time Gaara had seen him, he’d kissed Lee without prelude, absolutely undaunted by Kankuro’s disgruntled _oh dude, come on._

It had been wet and soft, and Gaara had tasted like tea, like salt, his lips as healed as they ever were, drawing back with an expectant look in his pale eyes.

_Thank you,_ Lee had stammered, staring back, unable to come up with an excuse for why Gaara would kiss him. Gaara. Wanted to kiss him. Luminous eyes very beautiful and unblinking on him. He remembered his manners, bowing sharply. _Thank you very much for saving me!_

_I was returning the favor_ , Gaara murmured, drawing him back up. And Lee remembered an echo of long ago, a much smaller body in his arms. The history of their turbulent friendship leading to this.

He gawked for a moment.

_Oi! I’m right here!_ Kankuro called, painted face dismayed.

_We’ll continue this later_ , Gaara whispered, forehead pressed against his, smoothing out the creases his fingers had put in Lee’s hospital gown.  
  


_We- We will?!_

_The hell you will!_ Kankuro complained. _You got any idea how much shit you’ve got waiting for you because you disappeared for a whole damn week?_

Gaara had ignored him, bright eyes on Lee.

_I...yes. Yes I would...like to see you later. And...thank you._

Gaara had smiled at him for the first time since the cave. A bare flicker of teeth, a swift final kiss, then he was gone.

There had been nothing distant about Gaara in that place, on reflection, soothing his shivering with the warmth and pressure of his body, licking the sweat from his skin when his fever broke. Feeding him mouthfuls of water with his own lips, and rubbing his aching throat with his fingers until Lee swallowed.

He hadn’t wanted to stop him then.

And he hadn’t wanted to stop him in the hospital when Gaara snuck into his room to press his ear against Lee’s heart and Lee had held him in his arms by night.

Even Kankuro coming in two days later and grumbling _aw c’mon_ , embarrassedly coaxing a groggy, grumpy, still-fully clothed Gaara out of the room with chakra threads hadn’t made Lee’s fingers linger any less in his as he was pulled away.

It hadn’t made his heart pound any less hard with hope.

_That_ Gaara would have given him anything, even his life, despite Lee’s protests.

He still would. And Lee would do the same.

It had felt like the most natural thing in the world, that they had fallen together in such desperate circumstances after a lifetime of desperate circumstances surrounding their meetings.

Sometimes Lee dreams of the cave, wondering if he’s still there, and if it’s just some strange fever dream to have the Kazekage in his home, coughing over the mild spice of his curried gizzard number forty, his soft, perpetually chapped lips swollen with the sting of it. If it’s a dream when he pulls Gaara’s thighs to either side of his ears, and plies shudders and groans from him. Or when he brings a blotchy flush to the surface of his skin, and feels the last of the sand armor crumpling off of Gaara’s heaving body in rivulets that always seem to leave a grains in Lee’s bed even though Gaara supposedly has perfect control of the sand.

He can feel some of it crunching under him even as he shifts, as he lifts the blanket so he can stroke Gaara’s hair.

He feels Gaara’s fingers probe him where he’d been before, the little flutter of the indigestion where Gaara had pressed deep and spilled stinging and hot inside him in a spasm of pleasure before they’d fallen asleep in one another’s arms.

That would have been unthinkable a handful of years before, Lee notes.

“ _Mm_ ,” he groans instead without thinking, limbs lazy and soft like he’d just done hours of penalty exercise.

Lee drew up his legs, fighting his drowsiness. It added a diffused edge to everything: the soft darkness, and Gaara’s fingers teasing the rim of him without any particular haste, and his lover’s chapped lips brushing against the shaft of his cock. All so very gentle.

“G’Morning,” Lee mumbled.

He felt Gaara smile against his skin, and a gap of marginally cooler air drift under the blanket when his head lifted.

“You’re falling asleep on me.”

“Mm, s’okay. You d’n have to stop,” Lee mumbled, stopping to give a jaw-cracking yawn. It was too _hot_ to be anything but drowsy and Gaara’s mouth was even hotter.

Gaara smiled against him, gnawing gently at the skin of Lee’s inner thigh to wake him a little.

“Don’t sleep,” he murmured. “Be here with me.”

“Mm,” Lee groaned in minor complaint. “I am here with you even when I am sleeping, th-“ he cut off with a hiss as Gaara left a mark on the soft skin of his other thigh with his teeth, making him jump. “ _Gaara._ ”

“Wake up, Lee.”

There was a smile in the Kazekage’s dry voice in the dark.

“I am _awake_ ,” Lee grumbled, flopping back onto the bed with a groan as Gaara added another slow, stretching, _teasing_ finger.

His body certainly finds Gaara’s sharp teeth very Youthful, and his _tongue_ , which flicks a bead of moisture from the tip of Lee’s cock with his typical care for water. Gaara’s tongue is _most_ youthful.

Lee quivers for a second feeling the hot rush of Gaara’s breathing in the dark, flush against his cock.

He squirmed.

“I have _told_ you I do not mind if you amuse yourself with my body while I am sleeping. So why does it matter if I am asleep or not?”

Gaara huffed out. Lee couldn’t see him but he thought the noise was derision.

“I want you to know what I’m doing to you.”

Lee’s face heated.

Lee’s yet to wake up to his lover inside of him, and his body singing with the thrill of their private battles, but he can’t say it hasn’t crossed his mind. More than once. 

He thinks he would be happy to give himself up, and wake aching and slow to the elation of realizing Gaara was part of it. To come crashing down within the arms and the trust of one he loved.

“I know what you are doing to me. You do not have to be so persistent.”

He felt Gaara’s lips curve into a silent smile, felt him kiss his balls, making Lee squirm, fingers pushing a little deeper, feathering a fluttering gasp from Lee’s lips.

He’s a little disappointed even that Gaara hasn’t taken this permission more to heart and hasn’t laid claim to the time together which is rightfully his as well. He’s here _already_ , and Lee trusts him with his life. His body is a small thing in comparison.

He would give his body, if he could know it would be so precious to another person, or so lovely and dear in their eyes. Any bit of it Gaara liked.

(And he dares to think Gaara likes quite a few bits of it.)

He feels the bed dip on either side of him, the hot, sour breath on his face before he’s kissed full on the lips.

Gaara tastes like youth.

Lee pulls away quickly.

“Mm-Oh _no._ Please _do not_ , I must taste disgusting.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the way you taste,” Gaara sighs, settling over him.

“ _Gaara._ ”

Slim fingers are still teasing slowly at Lee’s rim. He presses his thumb in in a swift push that makes Lee gasp. His body remains folded just along the left side of Lee’s so their skin touches. It’s too hot, slightly damp. Lee can feel himself sweating, as well as the softness of Gaara’s thigh, the patchy scratchiness of several hours without his sand armor, and the low, even humid flutter of his breathing.

“ _Mm-“_

Gaara tips his jaw towards him with a hand, and Lee scans the darkness blankly, feeling with his hands to find the side of his beloved’s face in turn.

The outline of Gaara is a darker black bit against a lighter black bit. Just an outline. Not even the gleam of his eyes in the dark. He can picture what Gaara’s fingers look like circling him.

Lee‘s forehead bumps Gaara’s by accident, a little too hard in the dark.

He hears the exhale Gaara makes before he feels the breath, measuring where his mouth is in the blackness.

Gaara bends and kisses Lee again, snaking his other arm around to pillow Lee’s head on a slender bicep, pushing him down with the heat and weight of his body so Lee moans, gives in.

He trusts Gaara with his life.

His pointed tongue grazes the ridges of the roof of Lee’s mouth and he groans into it, arches up to kiss him back, cupping the damp back of Gaara’s neck, dragging his tongue along the underside of Gaara’s so he feels the break of his lips, the slight intake of his breath, tipping back to kiss him more deeply.

Gaara sighs into his mouth. Lee feels him relaxing under the kneading circles of his fingertips.

The skin of Gaara’s inner arm is soft and fragile against his cheek like a gift, and Lee kisses it, tilting his body onto its side so he can embrace Gaara more fully, slipping his knee along the curve of his hip.

Gaara’s breath is hot against against the open gate of Lee’s mouth, shaking slightly.

Lee leans up to kiss him again, dragging his fingers down the back of Gaara’s neck, cupping and kneading at the muscles of his shoulders.

Gaara’s two fingers crook into him fully, a little rough, a little dry. Lee’s probably still damp and loosened from their mutual struggle a few hours before. It aches a bit. Not badly though. Definitely not badly. A good soreness.

Lee blushes a little, grateful Gaara can’t see it, grazing his tongue with his own, and tilting in to his touch.

He enjoyed that private battle. Immensely. Gaara’s skills improve by leaps and bounds every time they are together. He really is a genius.

Gaara’s fingers work into the soreness of him. It’s not a bad soreness. It’s very much like the burn of good, honest work. Lee finds that kind of thing enjoyable. He breaks away from the kiss to pant, to tilt his hips a little further into the slight burn, the budding pleasure of Gaara’s touch. He can feel breath on his cheek in the dark, can smell the earthy, mineral smell of him. Even with great improvement, Gaara’s still endearingly clumsy still at this. Even after years. Like he has to relearn part of it each time, and remap what he knows of Lee’s body by touch.

Lee’s eyes slip closed with a groan as Gaara’s teeth find the cords of his neck and _bite.  
  
_

_“_ _Muh_ -“

“Don’t fall asleep,” Gaara rasps, licking his throat.

His voice is still very close, breath mingling with Lee’s. Lee realizes his eyes had been slipping shut at the working of Gaara’s familiar fingers.

“Nn- ah- I am _not_.”

His voice comes out soft and sleepy though, a little breathless. A twinge of guilt when the tip of Gaara’s tongue finds his lower lip, slipping inside in another kiss that becomes a muffled moan at a particularly pleasant twist of Gaara’s fingers.

“I am here. With you,” Lee whispers, meaning it. Wanting it to be so. 

The dull ache of goodness in the probing of Gaara’s fingers is strangely soothing.

  
  


“Ah- _Gaara-_ “

“Yes?”

Lee falters.

“Please do not stop,” he whispers.

He feels the curve of Gaara’s smile against his throat just before he _bites._

Lee’s heels kick without thinking.

He’s safe and he’s warm, and he’s in the arms of one of the most dangerous Shinobi in five nations. Lee strokes the velvety skin of Gaara’s hip, the narrow, flexing cage of his ribs. The nipping gnaw of Gaara’s breath and teeth along his throat.

He just feels a suffusive bloom of love And happiness all through him, particularly in the tight place behind his eighth gate. Very warm and sleepy.

“Lee,” Gaara warns.

Lee lifts his eyelids.

“Not sleeping,” Lee grumbles, heatlessly. “ _M’not_.”

Gaara leans forward to kiss him. Softly. His tongue is sour, the taste of him off. 

Lee’s fingers rub little absent circles against the knobs of Gaara’s spine.

He makes a little noise at a particularly uncomfortable tug of his fingers.

“Mm-“

Gaara pulls back.

“It is okay. On the table. There should be-“ Lee cuts off, embarrassed.

Unless the lube fell off sometime during the night or sometime during the altogether pleasing struggle with Gaara before bed.

He’d had to fish the blankets off the ground, he remembers that much.

His face heats, burying it in Gaara’s shoulder with a squirm.

He feels the weight of Gaara’s silence in the dark.

A finger pokes him in the cheek.

“Don’t sleep.”

“I am- I am _nohhhhhhh-_ “ an enormous yawn cracks Lee’s jaw at exactly the wrong moment.

He hears Gaara huff through his nose.

“I am awake!” Lee insists, half cut off by Gaara pulling him closer to kiss him. Gaara’s hands push Lee’s leg higher over his hip with an openness of intention that makes him blush. “The lubricant should still be on the table.” 

There’s a pause, a motion in the dark, the brush of something warm against his hip. The heat of it, and the weight and softness tell him Gaara’s youth is stirring as well. The excited hungry rustle of his chakra up close, just the start of an easy tilting of their hips together in a slow rhythm.

Lee finds Gaara’s hair by feel, the soft skin of his cheek, a sandpaper patch of hours-old stubble. He pets at him, and sighs in relief when Gaara’s fingers fingers come back wet with slick.

“Mm...I have missed you so much,” Lee whispers.

“ _I’m here_.”

Gaara gnaws down the side of his face with little light catches of his teeth. There’s a whiff of the honest stink of love on his hands as he tilts Lee face to him so he can kiss him more deeply, rolling onto him.

“Yes. You are here,” Lee sighs.

The warmth of his body, the weight of him is like a full body training weight. Oddly soothing and grounding, even with the bright spark of their shifting together. All he can taste and smell in the dark, all he can feel is _Gaara._ Stifling heat.

He sees them as if he’s outside his body, in the cave again, his form stripped of the jumpsuit, burning and shivering with fever and sickness, and Gaara’s skin, flushed, fingertips gray with the poison he’s been slowly drawing out of him, lips cracked from lack of moisture. Eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion.

He knows that’s a fantasy, knows Gaara only kissed him in that cave, that he despaired far more at the thought of losing him. The knowledge that if he took Lee out of the cave to get help, if his attention wavered he would die. 

They were both wrapped up in pretenses.

But in his fantasy the Kazekage’s cracked lips are wrapped around the bud of his youth, sucking at him like he could pull poison out of him like that too, and Lee’s fevered hands are in his hair, Gray points on his skin around his chakra gates, lips similarly gray, pale.

Gaara’s sucking at him as desperately as if he is a fountain, lapping the beading pearls glistening off of Lee’s youth.

He’s crying out at the sweetness of it. The steady eye contact and the sweet friction of Gaara’s rough tongue and wickedly hot little mouth.

Lee knows without knowing how, in the curious logic of fantasies that if the gray track reaches his eighth gate he will die, that Gaara is heading it off at the seventh point, that Gaara can sense his need to see him, stripping off his red robes, his mesh armor, gray bruises of chakra visible through his skin. Lee’s poison affecting him as well.

Lee draws him down to him and pushes a mouthful of water between Gaara’s lips. He doesn’t know where it’s coming from, only knows that Gaara needs water, that he wants him to drink from him over and over until he isn’t thirsty anymore, until the gray cast leaves his eyes. 

Gaara’s on him, _inside_ him suddenly. Heavy and hot even through the fever. Warmth suffusing Lee’s shivering body as he wraps his weakened knees tightly around Gaara’s hips and feels him rock and rock and oh that’s _perfect_ \- Just the right roughness, bruising the backs of Lee’s hips on the rough, cold sandstone spread with Gaara’s discarded Kazekage robes to make a sickbed for Lee.

He groans and Gaara swallows it up like another mouthful of water. A whisper of his name, the borderline reverent way Gaara always says it, his red tongue lapping the sweat from Lee’s breastbone, still working the heat and fervor of his youth into and out of him in punishingly hard jerks of his hips, the thick swell of Gaara’s youth and the soft slap of the pouch of his balls against skin, the little bloom of excitement that flutters up in him as Gaara brushes his prostate at first seemingly by accident, and then with an absolute merciless level of attack.

Lee curls his fingers and _wails._

He can see the track of gray inching towards Gaara’s eighth gate, the fever threatening him from within.

With new strength Lee rolls them over until Gaara’s underneath him, riding him, the storm-like intensity of the feeling. Gaara’s chakra roiling inside of him and Gaara himself. Two sets of panting breaths mingling.

The weight and angle are both _perfect_ . Gaara is a genius, and he’s playing Lee’s body like an instrument, and if Lee can just wrap him tightly enough in his limbs, if he can just rock forcefully enough they will be okay. They will both be okay. If he can just hold this storm of heat and power in his arms and mingle with him until their Chakra is one network, until their connection is that profound, then they can fight this off together, and he’s close, he’s _close_ , feeling Gaara’s closeness as well, his cracked lips fallen open in a series of rhythmic sighs. If he can just-

Gaara’s lips are at his ear suddenly, loud and soft all at once.

“ _Lee_.”

Lee startles awake with a gasp, waking back up in the blind darkness and the heat.

He’s flat on his belly, lying in a pooling wet spot of precum, face mashed into his pillow. There’s a matching wet spot of drool under his cheek.

Gaara tucks a lock of his hair behind his ear, body pressed against the back of him. The glowing ebbing of pleasure in his belly tells Lee what had happened.

“You fell asleep.”

Lee groans in frustration, covering his face with his hand.

“I did not _mean_ to.”

“I know.”

Gaara makes a hum that could be amusement or could just be disgruntled. It’s difficult to tell when Lee can’t see his face.

“I was dreaming of you, though!”

He felt Gaara’s lips smile as he kissed the blade of his shoulder.

“You said my name.” Gaara kisses the other shoulder perfunctorily. Which is another way of him saying _I know_ , which is another way of saying _I love you_. Another way of saying _I would die for you._

Lee grins in the dark. He can feel the hot, full press of Gaara’s youth against him in the dark. The still fingers inside him. The sweat where their bodies lie flush against one another.

He hasn’t. Not yet. This still isn’t that thing he’d wanted and dreamed of. Not quite. Gaara’s just been fingering him open, kneading his already tender prostate. Teasing.

“Did you believe I was. Uhm. Awake?” Lee asks, a little hopefully.

Gaara went quiet and still.

“You do not have to wake me. I will say your name many more times if you wish.”

“No.”

“ _Gaara._ It is not a problem.”

_Even within my dreams I wish only to be with you._

Gaara makes a little _hm._ Lee can definitely feel him frowning against his shoulder. He huffs suddenly. A noise that could almost be a laugh.

“You seemed to be enjoying it. You talk in your sleep.”

“What did I say?”

“You said my name,” Gaara answered quickly. “You said you would save me.” He paused, and Lee could _hear_ his amusement for sure now, the sound of Gaara’s slow smile. “Then you _snored.”_

Lee his his face with a groan.

“I said I did not mean to!”

“And I said I want you to be _awake_.”

Lee sighs irritably.

“Then wake me up,” he grumbles.

Gaara goes still for a moment, then huffs that almost-laugh, rolling Lee back onto his back.

His skin is very soft and warm against the front of him. Lee makes a noise as he rearranges him to his liking, freezes at a pause in the dark.

“Uhm. What is it? Is something…?”

Gaara presses against him, warm skin against Lee’s belly and chest. It must be almost three thirty. He’ll need to be up soon, doing his morning stretches-

The blanket is wadded up under his back in a way that makes him arch interestingly, and Gaara is so close he can not only feel his breath but also the tickle of his fine red eyelashes.

Lee maps correctly and leans up for a kiss that connects properly in the dark, feeling Gaara’s jaw go slack, his weight settling slightly against Lee’s hips.

“It is almost time for me to get up,” Lee whispers.

“You’re already up,” Gaara murmurs in Lee’s ear. He’s definitely smiling now. An expression that would be slightly unnerving in the light.

“I- _mm_.”

Lee can feel the press of him just against the base of his chakra network, the thrum of heat and of power. The lingering coil of pleasure from where Gaara had been fingering his prostate while he drifted off.

Gaara’s lips find the shell of his ear, the hint of his teeth. The fine scrape of the stubble of Gaara’s belly against the damp muscles of Lee’s abs.

“I’ll wake you,” Gaara murmurs, somewhere between a threat and a promise. Another way of saying _I love you._ The same way that not-chuckle is another sign of love, or the careful fingers cupping Lee’s ears, trailing down the back of his neck, the sweat of their stomachs mingling.

Lee blinks up at the darkness, and thrills at the challenge, grinning.

He closes his eyes to dare Gaara to do it, feeling him lean down for another kiss.

-o-O-o-

**Author's Note:**

> What up, my name is Skuun. I’m EgregiousDerp on tumblr, and you should come and talk to me about how deeply hilarious Gaara finds it that other people legit can’t stay awake.
> 
> He’s laughing. On the inside.
> 
> (“You’re the most formidable and disciplined shinobi I know, yet I could hold off sleep indefinitely by the time I was five-“
> 
> Lee with his little sleep crusts rubbing his eyes like, “I am not doing it on purpose!”
> 
> And Gaara just like 😐  
> 😐✨)
> 
> Also, can you imagine, you’re like, the ascended former teen president just there minding you own business having a nap when you boyfriend’s Youth Tent (TM) pitches and wakes you up?
> 
> RIP Gaara.


End file.
